Olympic Affair

by Terry Frei

  Diem excitedly outlined a plan to light the first of many magnesium torches with a flame at the original Games site at Olympia in southwest Greece, transport the flame in a relay of many runners to Berlin, light the flame in the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremonies, and keep it burning through the sixteen days of the Games. Leni mulled the cinematic possibilities of following the flame. Inspired and intrigued, she knew that if she made the film, she had her title.

  Olympia.

  Leni’s Truth was that she finally gave in, excited and deciding that she would take daring risks. Olympia was being made for the world, albeit with Germany in the spotlight as the host nation. She believed all that when she said it. In fact, however, the Third Reich’s propaganda ministry funded and, because of that, at least implicitly controlled the project. “Forgotten” were her frequently distasteful negotiations with Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, to secure the Third Reich funding. When meeting her a couple of years earlier, the club-footed philanderer had acted like a teenager with a crush, telling her he waited outside the Berlin theater at the 1926 premiere of The Holy Mountain, starry-eyed and trying to see her on the way out. He gushed about her work, especially Triumph of the Will, in public and was willing to take credit with the Führer for aiding it. Leni fought off his advances and ignored his threats that if she didn’t become his mistress, she would regret it. Other actresses had been smart enough to give in; surely Leni would do so, too.

  The slimy Goebbels was living proof that Leni’s opportunism had limits.

  Still, in August 1935, Goebbels approved a lush budget of 1.5 million reichsmarks for the film, all coming from the Reich treasury, with the funds dispersed to Leni in four installments, beginning in November 1935 and ending in January 1937. Leni’s fee of 250,000 reichsmarks was to include her own expenses. She briefly considered the possibility that Goebbels was buying her silence about his clumsy advances, but quickly realized his response would have been to laugh in her face. Magda Goebbels knew of Goebbels’s affairs. So any threat to disclose his misbehavior to his wife would have drawn snide laughter from Goebbels, and he would have said Magda had a good life and wasn’t going to protest his indulgences; and also that Hitler didn’t care. So in reality, while Olympia wasn’t the Nazis’ idea, they quickly discerned its potential advantages for the Third Reich and arranged to pay for it. Leni’s company, Olympia-Film, was incorporated in December 1935, long after the deal with Goebbels was closed, and then only as a dodge to camouflage the Third Reich’s control. Under terms of the agreement between Leni and Goebbels, Olympia-Film eventually would become the Third Reich’s property.

  It was ludicrous to portray Leni operating as independently in the making of the film as if, say, a Canadian had been commissioned by the International Olympic Committee and the German Organizing Committee to produce a documentary of the Berlin Games. Yet that’s what Leni tried to do. That was Leni’s Truth. And now, with the opening of the Games only a month away, after over a year of research and planning how to deploy her forty-five cameramen, plus rehearsal shooting at other sports events, she was desperate to get her way on several key issues. Otherwise, her vision for Olympia—and her dream for her future—would be threatened. The Time story during the Winter Games had reminded her that the world’s view of her was distorted and unfair, and for it to be corrected, she would need to come up with a project appreciated in Great Britain and America.

  Leni didn’t mind that the magazine parroted the most extreme of her varied claims about her age, making her five years younger than she actually was. She wasn’t bothered that Time also didn’t have her meeting Hitler for the first time until 1934, a year after his ascension to power. Actually, their first encounter was in 1932. Leni went to hear Hitler’s rant about the ineffectiveness of President Paul von Hindenburg, wrote him a letter of appreciation, and then was astounded to be invited to meet him. At that audience, Hitler confessed that he, too, was a fan of her on-screen work, especially The Blue Light.

  Those inaccuracies in the Time story bought into Leni’s Truth, but what bothered her was the article’s sarcastic tone and that it influenced worldwide opinion. The cover and article seemed to imply that she was at the Winter Games on a skiing holiday as an honored Hitler guest. Rather, she was a true winter sports fan who also was there with her top six cameramen to ponder and again practice the techniques that she and her crew would use in following the athletes at the Summer Games.

  The Blue Light made it to some American theaters, and the gushing letters from America proved she had English-speaking fans among niche, big-city cinema enthusiasts. S.O.S. Iceberg was supposed to add to that, but the English-language version of the film for America’s Universal and studio czar Carl Laemmle was a badly put-together embarrassment. She wanted to be given a fair chance in America with films she could be proud of.

  She was determined that when she directed and starred in her next film, it would be as an artist whose work deserved worldwide exposure and respect. For that, she had to use Olympia to completely dispel, not add to, her undeserved image as a documentary maker under the control of Nazi leaders.

  In her third meeting with the handful of German men who served on the Berlin Games’ Athletics Organization Committee, she opened on the offensive in the ongoing argument over camera placements in the Olympic Stadium for the featured track and field competition.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said irritably. “You have to have the courage to stop saying it’s not within your power to make these decisions. I went through all the channels to find the right people at the International Amateur Athletic Federation and the International Olympic Committee and by the time we’d gone back and forth and wasted weeks, they said, ‘We will need to see what you have in mind once all the officials and participants arrive!’ I can’t wait that long. I must set up!” She gestured at Diem, next to her. “Dr. Diem has made it clear he is supporting me on this!”

  “Within reason, within reason,” Diem said.

  Leni considered which role and cards to play.

  “I must have saturation camera coverage from imaginative vantage points, not just a camera or two we hope isn’t blocked at the wrong time. My cameramen must have access to the entire floor of the stadium. We must be able to start digging our camera pits. We must be able to set up the rail along the track to slide our camera on, following the runners. We must be able to erect the four tower cameras at the corners of the infield. No more ‘Maybe this, maybe that.’”

  “We have heard this all before,” one official said.

  “Yes, you have. I do not do anything halfway. Nothing by halves! If I must, I will shut down this project. That wouldn’t sit well with those who want the international exposure and respect this film would provide for this nation. Everyone would benefit, including . . .”

  She stopped. Surely these imbeciles got the message. Everyone would benefit, including the Führer.

  The head of the committee, a lean fifty-something physician, sighed. “Fraulein, I will try to explain this to you again.”

  Leni glared. “I know it pains you to be speaking to a woman as an equal, Herr Görter, but don’t speak to me as if I am your maid.”

  “Fraulein,” Görter said wearily, “we are trying to help you. It will not help you if we say you can put your people and cameras in areas, but then everyone—coaches, athletes, heads of delegations—is horrified when they get there and see what you have in mind. If they protest and you are made to remove your equipment, fill in your pits and remove your towers, that would set you back. And it would be embarrassing for all . . . including you, correct? And including . . .”

  He let it hang there, knowing even Leni understood he meant . . . including the Führer.

  He tried to sound conciliatory. “Are you sure you can’t wait until the teams and officials begin to arrive?”

  “No! We must allow enough time for everything to be ready by the time the competition starts.”

  Diem clasped hi
s hands in front of him. “All right, scuttling this project is not an option, for many reasons. Waiting to confer with the foreign delegations and IOC and IAAF officials apparently is not an option, either.”

  Leni shook her head. No, it wasn’t.

  Diem continued, “Then we must come to a compromise agreement here. What can we all support in the stadium—and, more important, continue to stand behind if there are objections?”

  Görter sighed. “I can guarantee you that there will be objections to the camera catapulting along the track on that rail. As you describe it, Fraulein, it is very ingenious, but very distracting. And eight pits for the cameras will be too many. We’ll have people saying athletes will be falling into them all over the place. I don’t completely understand the necessity for the cameras and the photographers to be at or below ground.”

  “Angles and background,” Leni snapped. “Shooting up, the sky becomes the background.”

  “You are the artist. I suppose that makes sense. But eight pits? Eight?”

  “For the various events,” Leni said, as if there could be no dispute.

  Another man cut in. “And if you want to be shooting up, how do you explain the four towers?”

  “Different angles, shooting down. Variety. Again, not the standard shots.”

  Twenty minutes later, Leni had accepted a compromise of six belowground camera pits, strategically placed around the landing areas in field events and near the track, and two towers in the infield. She agreed that she would demonstrate the unmanned camera following the runners on the rail along the track for International Olympic Committee officials before the Games began—and remove it if they objected. She agreed to have no more than six cameras in the stadium at any given time. And the committee agreed it would treat the terms as a fait accompli. They emphasized they couldn’t guarantee the IOC and International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) would accept everything, but they would make a point of saying Leni had accepted many compromises and even rejections.

  After handshakes all around, Leni accompanied Diem to his office down the hall. Diem’s assistant, Werner Klingeberg, who hadn’t been in the meeting, was waiting for a report.

  Diem shook his head in wonderment for ten seconds. Finally, he said, directing his comments at his assistant, “She’s amazing.”

  “Thank you,” Leni said, smiling.

  “I keep waiting for someone—on the Games committee or even in the Reich Chancellery and Gestapo—to say having the Hindenburg above the stadium with Fraulein Riefenstahl’s camera is an intrusion, or a security risk. Nothing.”

  “It is a tribute to German ingenuity,” Leni said.

  Diem continued, still ignoring Leni, “She goes in saying she’ll ask for eight camera pits and settle for four. She got six.”

  “Yes, I did,” declared Leni.

  “She goes in saying the sliding camera along the track is expendable, so she lets them say maybe on that, acting as if she has made the biggest concession of our times,” Diem said.

  “It worked at the national championships,” Leni said, shrugging. “But I don’t have a lot of faith in it.”

  “She said she could get the job done with six cameras in the stadium,” Diem said. “She got six.”

  “Oh, I’ll have more than six. You think anyone’s going to be counting?”

  “And I still assume there will be some objections, and you still might have to remove some of these things.”

  “I know that. If most of it stays, I will be satisfied.”

  Klingeberg offered his hand to Leni. “Congratulations,” he said. “We could have used you at Versailles.”

  4

  Dempsey, Runyon, Morris

  By the time Glenn arrived in New York to watch the final Olympic Trials and train, he was far better known nationally than even when he secured a spot on the American team and set a world record. That was because many sports scribes jumped on the “Morris story” after the Milwaukee meet, reasoning it was a “safe” angle. Most of the rest of the team wouldn’t be determined until the meet at Randall’s Island, and the Trials ended only three days before the U.S. delegation’s departure for Berlin on July 15.

  One piece by Associated Press sports editor Alan Gould ran in many newspapers across the land, including in the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Gould quoted Amateur Athletic Union secretary-treasurer Daniel J. Ferris, who raved about Glenn’s chances to win at Berlin. “Morris combines extraordinary speed with the technique and stamina so essential to sustaining a high average of performance in the ten-event test,” Ferris said. “In 1912, Jim Thorpe had great speed and agility but was weak in some field events. Four years ago, Jim Bausch capitalized on ability in the weight events and the pole vault to achieve a world record victory at Los Angeles.” Gould also wrote, “No decathlon performer ever has shown the Coloradoan’s speed at foot-racing or hurdling, and at the same time managed to keep up with the leaders in the field events.” Gould did concede Glenn’s potential Achilles’ heel in the pole vault, where his best in his two competitions was an anemic 11 feet, 4 inches—or nearly 2 feet under what Bausch cleared in Los Angeles. He also noted what many considered the strangest aspect, worthy of second-guessing, about Glenn’s decathlon style: Although he was right-handed in all other things, he pole-vaulted “left-handed,” holding and carrying the pole to his left, with his left hand on top as he vaulted. But that seemed the most natural to Glenn when he first tried it, and his attempts at vaulting “right-handed” were disastrous.

  The Denver newspapers also profiled him, but the writers didn’t talk with him. Glenn told his friends at first that he had no idea where the scribes got some of the malarkey in the stories, but Harry Hughes explained that the Denver Athletic Club, his sponsor, was across the street from the Denver Press Club, the watering hole for Denver newspaper writers. The two memberships mingled. Stories were made up and kept getting better each time they were retold. And some of them ended up in the papers.

  However, Glenn realized he had no right to complain about the DAC. The club again came through, raising money for a travel fund, and there was enough for Glenn to ride the train and be in New York on July 6, a full five days before the final Trials. The reasoning was that he could get in hard training at the Randall’s Stadium site before the Trials started, continue to work out as he watched the other athletes attempt to secure their spots on the team, and try to be in peak condition before boarding the SS Manhattan for the trip across the Atlantic. At his first workout at Randall’s Island, he met with USA team assistant coach Brutus Hamilton, who won the decathlon silver medal in the 1920 Games and now was the track coach at the University of California. Hamilton declared he would be there to help, not interfere with Glenn’s training program—especially since he knew and respected Harry Hughes. “The scary thing is that you’re not even close to your peak in this,” Hamilton told him. “We’re going to do what we can in the two weeks there before you compete, to get you as close to that peak as possible after the boat ride.”

  Once the Trials began, U.S. team head coach Lawson Robertson often spotted Glenn, called him over and asked, “Say, have you met . . . ?” He had met many of the top athletes at Milwaukee or earlier, but he especially enjoyed again talking with the ace middle-distance man, Glenn Cunningham. The former University of Kansas runner was the much-admired fourth-place finisher in the 1,500 meters in the 1932 Games, and the world record holder in the mile. By the end of the meet, Glenn had shaken hands with the majority of his future Berlin teammates, and he was especially thrilled to meet renowned Negro sprinter and broad jumper Jesse Owens.

  Glenn also made sure he talked with the three pole-vaulters—Earle Meadows, Bill Sefton and Bill Graber—who made the team. Meadows and Sefton both were University of Southern California students, while Graber, in his mid-twenties, was a graduate of the same school. So there were a lot of USC sweatshirts and other gear around the pole vault pit. The discus also was a decathlon event, and Glenn had room for improvem
ent there, too, so he made sure to find the American aces. Ken Carpenter was another USC product and Gordon Dunn was from Stanford. Glenn also found himself talking a lot with the third qualifier, Cornell man Walter Wood, and the Easterner’s self-effacing sense of humor was refreshing.

  George Whitman, head of the DAC’s sports committee, came to New York to officially give him a good-luck sendoff, and he lobbied Glenn about the advantages of moving to Denver, sixty-five miles south of Fort Collins, after the Games.

  “But I need to eat,” Glenn pointed out.

  “If you’re in Denver, our people will be able to take care of you,” Whitman said. “I can guarantee right now you could be a buyer for the department store. As long as you’re representing the DAC, we’ll make sure you have time to train properly. I think we can take care of you better than those hayseeds up in Fort Collins.”

  Whitman’s smile took some of the edge off that, so Glenn didn’t react. The “hayseeds” in Fort Collins always would have his gratitude for stepping up when Glenn was a greenhorn kid from Simla trying to scrape his way through college. He and Whitman left it that they’d talk about it again after Glenn returned, and they both understood what was left unspoken—the higher he finished in the decathlon, the more in demand he would be.

  On the day after the track and field trials ended, the Olympic teams in all sports assembled at the plush Hotel Lincoln on Eighth Avenue, between 44th and 45th Streets. They had forty-eight hours before their departure for Berlin. Glenn was gratified to discover that his assigned roommate, at the hotel, on the SS Manhattan, and in the Olympic Village in Berlin, was the good-humored Cornell discus thrower, Walter Wood. They spent the first afternoon in lower Manhattan with many of their track and field teammates, obtaining passports. They had been told their Olympic ID cards would get them into Germany and back into the United States, but they needed to get passports, too, in case they participated in the post-Olympic exhibition meets in Europe. Glenn also waited in line in a huge meeting room to pick up his team and Olympic ID cards, plus a stack of information that included an Athletes’ Handbook, outlining what was acceptable—and not acceptable—from here on. During the conversations with teammates, Glenn quickly learned the athletes’ traditional tongue-in-cheek name for all AOC officials: Badgers. Nobody was quite sure how it came about, but it had been handed down. Badgers this, Badgers that . . .